suggest the intimate study of the
ramenta of Ferns.

Various as the situation of the fructification is, in three out of the
above four genera, yet the initial arrangements are precisely the same.
The various forms therefore may not depend proximately on fructification
itself, but on the peculiar growth given to the species, in the same way
in fact as we have the numerous modifications of the theca in mosses,
etc. and the infinite modifications of the carpels in Phaenogams.

(Attention is particularly pointed to those ferns which have general
capsules or involucres.

Above all to the Cyatheoid forms.

To Ophioglossum.

To naked Thecae.

To indusiate as Asplenia, etc.)

But however erroneous these views may be, they will still have been of
service if general attention is directed by them to plants, in
consequence of the suggestions they make. The time now thrown away on
isolated species, the station of which, still does not become fixed, when
devoted to the philosophical examination of ferns, will rescue botany
from one of its numerous reproaches. It is strange that such should
exist to the greatest degree in all those families stamped by nature as
most distinct. Those chaoses Polypodium, Aspidium, Davallia, would then
undergo distinct creation, and the primary divisions of the family would
become fixed; and we should then be spared the reproach of drawing
characters from organs, of the nature and functions of which we are quite
ignorant of, and of the importance of which in a science of demonstration
like that of botany, it is impossible to judge, without a true knowledge
of structure.

Vide Lindley's Introd. ed. 2, 407, for the protest of Greville and
Arnott.

What is the most comprehensive definition of a pistil. A case in which
the future organs of reproduction are developed; and here is a most
curious circumstance, namely, that though the calyptra, which is a
genuine pistillum containing an _ovulum_, becomes torn up from its base,
yet it remains in contact with that part of the seta in which the
sporules are developed until these make their appearance, or even later!!
so that one might as well deny a pistillum to a Reseda, or Leontice, as
deny it to these plants on the strength of its being torn from its
attachments. Sprengel's objections are worthy only of being noticed from
their having been quoted by Lindley. The vagueness of his statement
destroys all weight.

His objections in all cases amoun